Blaise

The Savage family just wants to be loved. Carole knows the team she manages despises her and tries everything to remedy the situation to no avail. Jacques, her husband, has never worked a day in his life and suspects that nobody respects him because of it. Then there is Blaise. A 16-year-old loner, introverted, and lacking convictions, Blaise takes the safe path by just going along with whatever. Like that time he met that Josephine girl at that party: Sure, he’s an militant activist! Sure, he’s mad as hell! Sure, he’s ready to blow it all up!

Director’s statement
Blaise and his parents started 15 years ago as the heroes of a comic-strips before coming to life in a series for ARTE. Now, with this film, I want to push the characters further. BLAISE is a bitter-sweet chronicle of a family struggling to connect to and with others. These characters offer multiple opportunities to discuss the difficulty of finding one’s place in our dizzyingly complex society: how to deal with the judgment of others, the pressure of the group, your crazy boss? How to construct a healthy image of yourself, belong to a milieu, have opinions, stand up for what you believe in and how easy it is to let inertia overcome us if our privileged social class, gender or skin color allows it. Blaise is overwhelmed by it all: family, society, TV, politics, terrorism, school, sexuality, fear, lying, death, religion, organic vegetables and sushi. At the center of the storm, Blaise listens, Blaise agrees, Blaise obeys, Blaise plays it safe, Blaise is scared of his own thoughts.